Quicksave & Quickload alterations

[vexx32]

This is not really something completely necessary, it is merely a suggestion for idiot-proofing the Quicksave & Quickload features, so people don't do something foolish and realise they've lost ridiculous amounts of work.

As some of you may have noticed, since the last release, there has been a few people complaining that they had lost a lot of game time by quickloading. This is because they simply quickloaded without actually knowing when the last quicksave was. In some cases, it was in excess of 10 or 20 hours of real-time work.

So, solution to this? Simple. Upon mission start, set a flag to say "a quicksave has not yet been made" on the vessel itself. Leave this flag unchanged until a quicksave has been made (naturally), and store it with the ship's information in the persistence file. Then, if a user attempts to quickload, the game can check whether or not a quicksave has been made during that mission. If not, the game can pop up a confirmation window with a warning telling them they might inadvertently load a very old save, and the options to Cancel and Quickload Anyway, as well as the two Revert options as an alternative.

Another good way to avoid this (I would think it best to be done in addition to the former) would be to have multiple quicksaves. Only a limited number should ever really be necessary (say, around 5 is plenty). Then, quicksaves can be made by pressing (for example only; this should be configurable) F5+1 through F5+5. Quickloads would be done in much the same manner; simply hold F9+1 through F9+5. In addition, when loading, the timestamp (in real-time as well as game-time) on the save to be loaded should be displayed in the few seconds before the save is actually loaded, so that the user can abort the operation if they realise it's the wrong file. In addition, the previous suggestion (popup a warning if no save had yet been made for that mission) should also apply for maximum idiot-proofing.

Finally, by extending both previous suggestions, one could set a flag on each quicksave file that records which ship was active when the quicksave was made. This information could be displayed along with timestamps to further idiot-proof the features.

These should allow users to be very conscious of how much work they stand to lose as a result of loading up a save which may have been made a long time ago, and should effectively prevent anyone from inadvertently losing a great deal of work.

[Sirrobert]

As long as all that can be turned off, cause all I see is an extra step in quickloading.

Would be good for the idiots though

[vexx32]

No, but that's just it -- as long as you have saved during that mission, it's pretty much the same as usual. It just shows the timestamp and vessel name marked on the quicksave you're loading.

[Sirrobert]

I see. In that case, I'm in full favor

[Kasuha]

Or, instead of requiring the user to hold the quickload key it could just display a confirmation dialog:

You are about to load a quicksave which is 20 hours old. Proceed? [Yes] [No]

and accept Enter as Yes too so you don't need to reach for mouse.

It could perhaps use different colors for the quicksave age, white for up to 10 minutes, yellow for up to 2 hours, red for anything above that.

[Sirrobert]

Or, instead of requiring the user to hold the quickload key it could just display a confirmation dialog:

You are about to load a quicksave which is 20 hours old. Proceed? [Yes] [No]

and accept Enter as Yes too so you don't need to reach for mouse.

It could perhaps use different colors for the quicksave age, white for up to 10 minutes, yellow for up to 2 hours, red for anything above that.

Long as it can be turned off

[mrthehud]

I totally +1 this. Hell, +all the points. I just lost more days work than I even know because I forgot to quicksave and hit F9. Totally didn't think I'd loose more than the current session's worth of save. But ho!

Totally thinking of an hourly cronjob to backup my save file.

Tears,

Hud.

[XiXLLAMAXiX]

As someone who just lost literally 9 hours worth of gameplay, I would very much like this...